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  4. New to VI from Giga and totally confused!

  • New to VI from Giga and totally confused!

    M
    M
    Having been using GS3 for years, with a variety of samples including some Vienna, I've just been seduced by the VI Special Edition.

    But having loaded it I can't figure out how to get it to do anything close to what Giga can do.

    I'm used to playing back (via Sibelius) 16 channels of MIDI, each of which represents a different orchestral instrument, and hearing the results "live" straight out of Giga.

    VI standalone doesn't observe Midi channels at all, and so the only option seems to be to use something like V-Stack to load multiple instances of VI. I haven't tried this yet - don't want to waste another £50 on V-stack if this is a non-starter. Am I really going to get 16 instances of VI on a 3Ghz 2Gb machine?

    Or have I just wasted £230?
  • S
    S
    Vienna Instruments software is best used as a plugin. One of the things significant about it - - aside from the superb quality of the samples - - is the ability create custom matrices incorporationg many different articulations on a single MIDI channel. You get to choose which articulations will be loaded into the matrix you design and you decide which controllers (e.g Continuous Controllers, keyswitches, speed, etc.) you will use to access the different cells for the matrix. For Sibelius users who are condemned to one MIDI channel per staff (unlike Finale users who can create non-printing directions for as many channel changes as they need on any single staff) this is a particularly useful feature. I would strongly advise viewing the videos on the VSL website to gain insight into what you can do with the Vienna Instruments. You will, however, need a VST host application to use the Vienna Instruments as a plugin.
  • PaulP
    VSL Team
    PaulP
    last edited
    last edited
    Hi Mike,

    you can download a trial version of Forte at www.brainspawn.com, the only limitation is that you cannot save your loaded VSTi´s....

    You will be able to load 16 VIs on your machine, no problem.
    And please find our Video Tutorials here.

    Hope that helps [:)]

    Best,

    Paul
    Paul Kopf Head of Product Marketing, Social Media and Support
  • M
    M
    Thanks, both.

    If I load a number of VI instances using Forte (or another VST host) and different instances use the same instruments or patches, is the memory used by those patches shared between different instruments?

    Mike
  • PaulP
    VSL Team
    PaulP
    Hi MikeHC,

    yes, the memory is shared [:)]

    Best, Paul
    Paul Kopf Head of Product Marketing, Social Media and Support
  • M
    M
    Paul -

    I've been having major problems with Forte crashing when I load more than about 8 VI instances. This is on a 4Gb machine (and I've tried both with and without the /3GB switch).

    I contacted brainspawn tech support and they say:

    "You are very likely running into memory constraints on your system. VSL is normally very reliable when hosted in forte, though I rarely see people using more than 4 or 5 instances of the plug-in. The samples VSL uses can be very large. 8 or 9 is really pushing it, I think 16 is totally out of the question."

    So which of you is right?!

    The point here is that if it's impossible to load 16 or more instances of VI on a single 4Gb machine, and if (as per a separate post) it is not possible to split VI SE between two machines, then it follows that a single VI SE licence is useless for orchestral arrangements - you'd need to buy at least two licences and run them on two machines!

    Mike
  • D
    D
    Forte support is talking rubbish. There is nothing wrong with loading 20 or so instances. Agreed the samples loaded can be large, but only if you use presets. If you make up your own matrices then you have control over how much memory is used.

    One thought before we take this further. Have you done any GS memory tweaks?

    DG
  • M
    M
    Hi -

    Yes, I was running GS on this machine - but went into the GS configurator and set it back to "use the system original configuration".

    I've been setting up my own matrices with only the patches I need - 8 articulations per instrument for strings, and 4 per instrument for woodwind. According to VI there's masses of memory free (well over 1Gb).

    I just started over from scratch, got up to about 9 instances with camples loaded, saved the Forte file, quite Forte, restarted Forte, reloaded the rcf file, and during the load the machine suddenly rebooted without warning!

    Any help you can give would be massively appreciated!

    Mike
  • D
    D
    last edited
    last edited

    @MikeHC said:

    Hi -

    Yes, I was running GS on this machine - but went into the GS configurator and set it back to "use the system original configuration".

    I've been setting up my own matrices with only the patches I need - 8 articulations per instrument for strings, and 4 per instrument for woodwind. According to VI there's masses of memory free (well over 1Gb).

    I just started over from scratch, got up to about 9 instances with camples loaded, saved the Forte file, quite Forte, restarted Forte, reloaded the rcf file, and during the load the machine suddenly rebooted without warning!

    Any help you can give would be massively appreciated!

    Mike

    I still think that it is something to do with GS memory tweaks. You need it to be on XP default. You can check this in the registry, but I'll have to look and get back to you as to where exactly it is. Unfortunately I'm not in the studio today.

    DG
  • D
    D
    One more thing. Load the standalone of VI and as many samples as you can. Maybe this will help to remove Forte being the problem from the equation.

    DG
  • D
    D
    OK, here is where to check:

    Start
    Run...
    regedit
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    SYSTEM
    CurrentControlSet
    Control
    Session Manager
    Memory Management

    Now, double click on each of the next 4 D-words in turn. They should all be set to 0 for you to be running the XP default.

    NonPagedPoolQuota
    NonPagedPoolSize
    PagedPoolQuota
    PagedPoolSize

    Report back as to your findings.

    DG
  • M
    M
    Thanks for this.

    Checked the registry settings - all four were zero.

    Will load up the standalone VI as suggested and let you know what happens.
  • D
    D
    OK, I just checked using Chainer (which is not LAA) on my 4Gb machine. I loaded 20 instances and eventually Chainer crapped out at around 1.75GB. Maybe the Forte demo is not LAA. I have been told that the proper version is, so I don't understand why there would be a difference like this in the demo.

    DG
  • M
    M
    I'm now using the full Forte version, not the demo. The demo is incredibly annoying because it times out after a certain amount of time, making it virtually impossible to load up all the patches and get everything the way I wanted it for a proper test. Grr. So I decided to risk it and buy the full version.

    Your hunch in your last post was correct. I loaded up a similar set of matrices in the standalone, and it froze on me.

    I've just loaded them all again, and checked the memory values in the Perform tab after loading each matrix. I got as far as

    21760 samples
    1360 Mb used
    1925 Mb free
  • M
    M
    ...sorry, tail end of my last post got truncated...

    ...which was further than I had got before, so I thought I'd check out saving/loading the setup. Saved OK, but when I came to reload, the machine rebooted without warning part way through.

    Just to rule out a memory glitch I am currently running a memory check utility on the box!

    Mike
  • D
    D
    OK, this is sounding more normal now. I would imagine that you don't have the /3Gig switch installed. Next thing to check (using Task Manager):

    Load 1.2GB in Forte (so that you don't hit the end stop), then open a standalone instance of VI and load around the same amount. If you can do it, then it is likely to be a /3Gig switch problem. If not, then you need help from someone else, I'm afraid.

    DG
  • M
    M
    I do have the /3GB switch set in boot.ini.

    OK, I got 1.2Gb into Forte, and then tried to load a similar amount into the standalone VI. Once I got to around 811M (as reported by Task Mgr) VI froze.

    Any ideas what this means? - you're a step or two beyond me here!
  • M
    M
    OK, FWIW the outcome of this was...

    I ran some memory tests but nothing much came up, and VI kept crashing no matter what I did.

    So I gave up on that machine, and took out my extra 2Gb of memory and installed it in my other Giga machine. Removed the GS3 memory tweak, added the /3GB switch, loaded VI and Forte.

    And it works like a dream.

    21 instances of VI, with 1527 samples loaded - and still over 1Gb of free memory. Clearly on this box CPU will top out before memory does.

    As to why it didn't work on the other machine, I have no idea. I'm just grateful that I happened to have another reasonably beefy box standing by as a spare.

    Mike
  • D
    D
    Glad you got it sorted. I really don't know what could be the problem on the other machine. Hopefully someone else will chime in before you get as far as an OS re-install.

    DG
  • M
    M
    I think I'm going to stick to GS3 on the other machine - which worked fine - or maybe if I'm feeling brave, I might try GVI...!

    Thanks for all your help.